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Not something we usually cover here, but it's a fun bit of hardware news. The Raspberry Pi 4 is now official and it's out and ready to pick up.

Interestingly, they also overhauled their home-grown Raspbian Linux OS, as it's now based on Debian 10 Buster. To go along with this, their original graphics stack is being retired in favour of using the Mesa "V3D" driver developed by Eric Anholt at Broadcom. They say it has allowed them to remove "roughly half of the lines of closed-source code in the platform" which is a nice win.

Here's the breakdown of the hardware:

  • A 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU (~3× performance)
  • 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM
  • Full-throughput Gigabit Ethernet
  • Dual-band 802.11ac wireless networking
  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • Two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports
  • Dual monitor support, at resolutions up to 4K
  • VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x
  • 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video
  • Complete compatibility with earlier Raspberry Pi products

You can see their quick announcement video below:

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The price still sounds great too, especially now with different RAM options (price may be slightly different in various shops stocking them):

  • 1GB - $35/£34
  • 2GB - $45/£44
  • 4GB - $55/£54

For those who love to tinker, it really sounds like a great little unit. I've still never picked one up but I've always wanted one to play with. Sounds like my wait was worth it, might have to set one up as a little media centre of some sort. The additional performance should be quite interesting for gaming too, could also make a good streaming unit with the Steam Link App for Raspberry Pi.

You can read their full announcement here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Hardware
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26 comments
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Xakep_SDK Jun 24, 2019
> No mainline support
Thanks, no.
wvstolzing Jun 24, 2019
I have an original Pi which craps out while trying to import some Python modules ... I'm ogling this one so badly.
Beamboom Jun 24, 2019
If only the day had a good handful more hours in it, I'd so totally spend some of those tinkering with RP and create fun stuff.
sub Jun 24, 2019
Sounds good.
Looking forward to it.

Things I'm interested in.

Does it come with Vulkan support? (Proper Vulkan support)
And will it be a viable option to drive GC games via dolphin? :)
wvstolzing Jun 24, 2019
Sounds good.
Looking forward to it.

Things I'm interested in.

Does it come with Vulkan support? (Proper Vulkan support)
And will it be a viable option to drive GC games via dolphin? :)

In case you didn't know about this youtube channel: https://youtu.be/gPLnXpdcP-A
This guy makes emulation review videos for various systems on the RPi (alongside other things). I'm sure there will be videos dedicated to Dolphin.
WorMzy Jun 24, 2019
I recently jumped ship from Pi to ODroid, and TBH, it's been a lot more effort than I would have liked. The stock kernel that ALARM ships with doesn't support the XFS filesystem on my backup raid, and the mainline kernel doesn't support my eMMC. I've already had one SD card crap itself since switching, but since I can't use the eMMC until upstream fixes support for it, I'm kind of stuck using them. :(

Sad to see that the new Pi doesn't have an eMMC slot, if a "big player" started using them, I figure there'd be a bit more attention paid to the upstream code, and breakage either wouldn't happen, or wouldn't linger around for months...
finaldest Jun 24, 2019
I didn't know they were so cheap

I have never used one but I may now look into getting one to use as an emulator at those prices. I have also seen a few sweet custom cases on YouTube that are build to fit so may get one of these also.

Thanks for the heads up.
kokoko3k Jun 24, 2019
> No mainline support
Thanks, no.
Where did you read that?
Stupendous Man Jun 24, 2019
Nice, I'm certainly getting one (or two or three )! You can never get enough raspberry pie.


Last edited by Stupendous Man on 24 June 2019 at 11:43 am UTC
Praxach Jun 24, 2019
Yay! Finally!
A worthy upgrade for my Retropie / Kodi box

And thanks to the USB3 + full gigabit ethernet maybe I can finish my cloud storage project

That is exactly what I was thinking. Now with these specs I can retire an old PC that I use for a HTPC & NFS.
pb Jun 24, 2019
I guess I've held off getting one of these long enough. Bought one. :-)
emphy Jun 24, 2019
I didn't know they were so cheap

I have never used one but I may now look into getting one to use as an emulator at those prices. I have also seen a few sweet custom cases on YouTube that are build to fit so may get one of these also.

Thanks for the heads up.

Make sure that those cases' designs caught up with the new pi's layout.
haiku Jun 24, 2019
Well 55$ + 10$ for the case + 5$ for the alimentation + 10$ for the SD.. ~roughly 80$
For a bit more you can find more powerfull & capable NUC ^_^
Dunc Jun 24, 2019
Oooh, that looks good. I have a few Pis scattered around the place (mostly idle, it has to be said), but still never got around to buying a 3. Might just skip that version altogether. :)
wvstolzing Jun 24, 2019
Well 55$ + 10$ for the case + 5$ for the alimentation + 10$ for the SD.. ~roughly 80$

The lowest configuration at ~€75 has no RAM or SSD, though. When you start adding those in, prices start climbing up very quickly.

Also, what's the hardware compatibility situation with these NUCs? At least on the RPi, you can be confident that with Raspbian you won't run into any issues.
Alloc Jun 24, 2019
Well 55$ + 10$ for the case + 5$ for the alimentation + 10$ for the SD.. ~roughly 80$
For a bit more you can find more powerfull & capable NUC ^_^
What about power consumption?
Ardje Jun 24, 2019
Still no eMMC?
Dragunov Jun 24, 2019
I absolutely Love these things! I've bought the R-PI 1B+ , R-PI 2B, the R-PI 3B, and the R-PI 3B+. Definitely adding this to the collection.

I personally dislike the Raspbian OS though, I would prefer Vanilla Debian. Right now i'm using Ubuntu Mate.
I'm also running one connected to my TV as a Media Center/Streamer running Kodi.

You just can't beat the price and Utility of these things, sooo many uses.

I don't think there's any thing wrong with covering this Liam, I mean they run Linux and you can Game on them. Perfect fit.

Don't forget guys! The new Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and the Raspberry Pi 4 support booting directly from a USB Hard Drive or SSD, I could really care less about EMMC.


Last edited by Dragunov on 24 June 2019 at 5:23 pm UTC
haiku Jun 24, 2019
At least on the RPi, you can be confident that with Raspbian you won't run into any issues.
I run my home server on a chinese nuc, no problem since years... It's an x86 :P
What about power consumption?
Celeron J1900 10W/N3510 7,5W add a bit much for ram and ssd..


Last edited by haiku on 24 June 2019 at 5:30 pm UTC
Cestus Jun 24, 2019
finally a worthy upgrade!
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